Is an Agent a Bot with Better PR?: 5 Questions to Ask About NHI
Brief
By Bill Bradley, Product Marketing
I’ve recently spent time at identity-focused conferences and couldn’t miss all the messaging about agentic solutions. It got me thinking: agents are just bots with a better PR team. For over a decade, “bot” has been a dirty word. Botnets. Credential-stuffing bots. Bot traffic you pay to filter out. There is an entire security category designed to mitigate the impact of bots.
And now, bot traffic now outnumbers human traffic .
It seems like countless companies are eager to now hand those same systems over to agents. In some sense, it’s the same autonomous software, with the same delegated credentials, and the same ability to act without a human in the loop. The bot we blocked on Monday is the agent we onboard on Tuesday, and the only thing that changed is the marketing.
On the other hand, there is a technical difference.